What with the longer nights and Halloween just gone and the world plunging into ever deeper financial crisis, I thought I’d share with you a few items that really tap into the mood of the moment. I’m sitting here on my uncomfortable sofa in my living room in cold windy Guernsey, tapping away to Jazz FM (Diesel is bowling so I get to spend my evening TV free. I almost feel like a student again. Except I’m not wearing my coat indoors), full of beans, enjoying a large glass of Merlot. I’ll try and get it all out my system so the next post is a bit more cheery.
Dinner
It was totally filthy and wrong, in a ‘South American slasher film, directed by Heinz, guest starring a bit of classic British sauce and a fiery Mexican with a lot of bottle’ kind of a way. Brown toast, spread with a generous layer of garlic and herb Philadelphia, sprinkled with a very liberal application of jalapeno peppers, piping baked beans, HP sauce, fresh black pepper, chipotle Tabasco and celery salt. Don’t ask me where I got my inspiration from, like I said, it must be time of the year or a full moon or something. It was delicious. Go on, I dare you.
‘Adopt a Pig’
Maybe it’s me, but does the word ‘adoption’ really marry very well with anything that you may at some point in the future want to kill and eat? Reading ‘Food and Travel’ (November 2011 edition) the other day I came across an advert for ‘Yorkshire Meats’ (www.yorkshiremeats.co.uk) who have taken the whole responsible eating idea and taken it, in my view, a step too far. I am passionate about eating quality meat from animals that have been treated with respect and not factory farmed and all the rest of it, so much so that I’m happy to eat far less meat than ever and pay more for it (it should definitely cost more than £6 to produce a chicken).
This however does not mean that I want to name the animal I’m going to eat, receive regular e-mails on its progress, a photo of it as an adorable piglet and at six month intervals until the day I decide it looks fat enough to go off to get murdered. I mean Christ, if eating meat isn’t barbaric enough; surely it’s worse if you want to eat one that you have ‘adopted’. I believe everyone should see an animal get slaughtered - even just once. If you can’t come face to face with the reality then you shouldn’t eat meat. And it is horrific, awful, and I have great respect for people who do the dirty work and the animals themselves, but everyone needs distance. If I adopted a pig, named it Dave, had it’s ‘first day at big school’ photos stuck to the fridge and received regular e-mails informing me about how he’s getting on with the other pigs, when the time came I’d probably rather invest in a plot of land and a cosy shed for Dave to live out his days until nature took its course. Adopt a pig? You make me sick.
Man vs Food
(http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Man_V_Food)
For anyone who has not watched this before, the show essentially revolves around a chubby New York chef eating his way around The States focussing on all known food related extremes. The hottest, the biggest, the spiciest, the fattest...you get the picture. This TV show demonstrates perfectly everything that is wrong with our relationship with food in the West. And yet I just can’t get enough of it. It is disgusting, ridiculous, repetitive, but it is also far and away my favourite food show on TV at the moment. There have been so many TV shows on in recent years that focus on angry chefs, high end food, and ‘the toughest, most intense, biggest competition ever, part 10’ blah, blah, blah, that I’ve almost had enough. In any case it hasn’t been the same since we lost the late great Floyd (I met him once, I’ll tell you about it another day).
I can only compare it to spending all day walking round the National Gallery with a guide who has a PHD in art history and a one-time captive audience, and then at 5pm, running out into Trafalgar Square, taking all your clothes off and jumping into an enormous bath of jelly with Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin who get you drunk on Champagne and tickle you with enormous feathers. You know it’s wrong, but you’re doing it because it feels nice. I know this TV show is awful, but it feels really nice. My brain may be melting out my ears, but at least I’ll go with a smile on my face.
www.thisiswhyyourefat.com
Now no longer working it would appear. I did find a few classics on this blog though:
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Hedone
I only add this here because it is a bit frightening (tenuous link I know) how excited I am about an upcoming hot (birthday inspired) lunch date I have with Romaine Butler at new(ish) restaurant ‘Hedone’ in Chiswick. To say I am excited about this is something of an understatement. I heard about it in AA Gill’s review in the Sunday Times this week (I may have mentioned I’m a massive fan once or twice) and he gave it five stars for both food and atmosphere. That was all the encouragement I needed. Amazingly I got a table no problem, but watch this space people. I’ve been frantically doing all the research I can on this place and I think we’ll be hearing a lot more about it as it becomes more established. What makes this place so exciting for me is that it is owned and run by a blogger with a passion for sourcing perfect produce. Rumour has it he spent a whole year before opening day researching and deciding which suppliers he was going to use. One review I read called this place a ‘food nerd’s paradise’. Unfortunately the website is pretty shite, so I’ve taken what I can from other bloggers and reviews. I think it’ll be an expensive one so I’ll make sure I quaff enough wine to make the bill ‘hilarious’ rather than ‘terrifying’, and if I’m brave enough I’ll try and take a few photos to post here as well. If excitement was fake tan, right now in an orange room you would only be able to see my teeth and eyes.
Feed
I’ll leave this with you. It’s a food based horror film, and it is Absolutely Disgusting. If you do watch it, do not, I repeat, DO NOT watch it clutching a bag of popcorn. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
